Welcome to Film Apocalypse!

Trantastic is the
sixth ultra low-budget film released by Leia and Brandon Gadow at Scumbag
Movies. On the surface, this film is a mocumentary about the
frustrations of being a non-gay transvestite in a world that assumes any
man who wears women's clothing must be gay. However, below the
surface, the film is really a satirical, dark comedy that makes fun of
pretty much everyone...including the filmmakers themselves...while
leaving the viewer with the unanswered question, "Why are most
people so judgmental about everything?" I would imagine that
if you showed this movie to a large group of people, you'd probably piss off
most of
them and only a few would get it, but they would think it was hilarious. This film is
definitely not for everyone and falls more into the category of 'art
film' than mindless entertainment.

In terms of visual quality, the opening credits of Trantastic are
extremely cool. There is also some archival footage that looks
like it's from the 50s or 60s used at the beginning and end of the film
that looked great. The majority of the mocumentary itself is amateur
quality which works really well for the documentary style that the
filmmakers were emulating. Although there are a few spots where
the actors seem to be having trouble keeping a straight face, the acting
overall isn't bad. Part of the plot is that the transvestites in
the movie don't want to look like women. They simply feel comfortable as
men in women's clothes. In keeping with that theme, none of the
men make even remotely attractive women. Most of them don't shave
their facial hair and all of them put on their makeup poorly. This
makes the 'sexy' photo shoot sequences particularly uncomfortable to
watch. In fact, the filmmakers seemed to put a good bit of effort
into making every scene as uncomfortable as possible and most of the
time, they succeed. Musically, there are a lot of songs that
add to the discomfort of the movie with jarring audio. There are a
few great songs on the soundtrack which almost feel out of place
considering the rest of the music seems to have been chosen to be
intentionally dissonant. Keep in mind, that the goal here was to
create a movie that makes you question why 'normal' is normal. The
filmmakers did a very good job in that respect. However, I think
the movie runs a good bit longer than needed and if it had been edited
down to 60 minutes rather than 80 minutes, it could have been a tighter
film while still getting the same point across.

I review a lot of movies
that aren't really made for the general public. You really need to
be able to look past the lack of big-budget quality to appreciate most
Film Apocalypse movies. With that in mind, I think the Trantastic
is even less accessible than most of the movies that I review. Not
only do you need to be comfortable watching a film without a budget, but
you also need to be comfortable with the fact that the world is a very
hypocritical place. If you're looking for a movie that's both
darkly comical and will also make you think the world around you, Trantastic fits well into
both of those categories.